About European Sources Online

What is ESO?

European Sources Online (ESO) is an online database which provides access to information on the institutions and activities of the European Union, the countries, regions and other international organisations of Europe, and on the issues of importance to European citizens and stakeholders.

What can ESO help me do?

Want to find information on:

·       The Constitutional Treaty for Europe / The Reform Treaty / Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

·       Reform of the CAP

·       The French Presidential Election 2007

·       Economic situation in Germany

·       The stand-off between President and Prime Minister in Ukraine

·       The role of NATO in European security

·       Implementation of the MiFID Directive

·       Where does power lie in the EU

·       What is EFTA

·       Climate change

·       Energy security

·       Extraordinary rendition

·       Etc etc

ESO is able to help you efficiently and easily -

Keep up to date with developments in the European Union and the rest of Europe

Find an expert selection of information on European topics from a very wide range of information sources : offering primary and official sources of information, plus commentary, analysis, summaries and news

Find an up-to-date, structured, introduction to each of the EU Institutions and main policy areas with hyperlinks to many further sources of information in ESO’s unique Information Guides

Find an up-to-date structured list of important websites for information on fifty European countries

Find articles from two of the most authoritative newspapers for European information: Financial Times and European Voice.

What does ESO contain?

ESO provides access to thousands of expertly selected, well known and less well known websites, documents and publications from the EU and other international organisations, national governments, think tanks, stakeholder organisations, working papers etc, full text articles from authoritative news sources Financial Times and European Voice, plus bibliographic records to key academic textbooks and periodical articles, and a series of unique Information Guides compiled by the ESO Editorial Team. View lIst of Indexed Sources

Each information source is indexed and a ‘bibliographic record’ created, which permits efficient retrieval by a variety of means such as keyword, author, title, subject number and geographic indicator.

Each information source is also categorised by the following ‘source types’ and ‘source origins’, to allow for more precise searching.

Source types Source origins

·       Background EU

·       Key Source  National official source

·       Legislation International organisation

·       News source Regional/local organisation

·       Periodical article Professional / public / political organisation

·       Policy-making document Commercial publisher and media

·       Report

·       Statistics

·       Textbook, monograph, reference

·       Information Guides / In Focus

How does ESO work?

European Sources Online has a simple interface which allows users access to all the sources within the service in a single search.

Information can be accessed by searching or browsing. You can search by inserting the subject / topic that you are looking for information on in the search field on the home page. By default ESO will search the entire database for information. If you wish you can refine or restrict your search to particular types of informaton (‘source type’ and ‘source origin’). Further search options are available from the Advanced Search page (available from January 2008). You can browse the unique ESO Information Guides from the link on the homepage.

From January 2008 you will be able to set up a customised weekly email alert which will provide you with links to all items added to ESO that week in the subjects of your choice. You will also be able to save searches and save records.

Each item of information added to ESO (be it a book, chapter of a book, periodical article, newspaper article, website, report, official document, pamphlet etc) is humanly indexed and given a ‘bibliographic record’. The ESO database searches these records to find you information. From the vast majority of records you have the means to access the full text of the information immediately either within ESO itself or by a hyperlink to the external web. You can also submit Open URLs from citation records in ESO to link resolvers such as Article Linker or SFX in order to locate full text or physical holdings for many academic journal articles and increasingly for monographs e.g. CrossRef, OpenURL, MetaLib, XML

How often is ESO updated?

Content is selected every day by the ESO Editorial Team and bibliographic records created and added to the service. The ESO Information Guides are revised and updated on an annual basis and new ones created when the need arises.

Who uses ESO?

ESO enables you to find all types of information about Europe from the text of an EU Directive to a booklet for children, from a set of statistics to a newspaper article, from a research report to a website. Consequently, ESO is designed to help a very wide range of user find information with a European dimension. Key users are citizens, students and researchers, government officials, NGOs, corporate and professional organisations.

Can’t I find all this information for free on the web?

We all use a variety of services and techniques to find information. Undoubtedly, general search engines, the EU’s own portal EUROPA, databases such as ECLAS and news services such as EUR-ACTIV and EUObserver are all useful. However, ESO goes beyond all those means and offers you a dedicated European information service that through expert selection of sources, wide coverage of sources, powerful functionality, added value content and a coverage that goes beyond just the EU, really does offer you something more.

What are the technical requirements for using ESO?

ESO has been tested using Firefox 2.0.0.5 and Internet Explorer 2.0.6900

Earlier versions and alternative browsers should work, but not be guarenteed

Who do I contact for further information about ESO?

Editorial Enquiries

including: What does ESO contain / How does it work / Broken links / Suggestions for content/coverage / Errors / Requests for training assistance

Ian Thomson Tel: +44-(0)29-20-874262 Email: ESO@cardiff.ac.uk

Technical Support

including: IP / Password enquiries / Speed of access / MARC Records / Remote access / Usage statistics / Email alert / Accessibility issues

Jeff Thomas Tel: +44-(0)29-20-874262 Email: ESOWebmaster@cardiff.ac.uk

Subscription Enquiries

Initial enquiries concerning subscriptions, including trial subscriptions, consortia deals and why you should subscribe:

Ian Thomson Tel: +44-(0)29-20-874262 Email: ESO@cardiff.ac.uk

[Note that all subscriptions will be administered by JISC Collections. United Kingdom HE and FE Institutions can follow this link. Other organisations should initially contact Ian Thomson for subscription information]

Postal address:

Ian Thomson

Executive Editor, European Sources Online

South Wales Europe Direct Information Centre

Cardiff University

PO Box 430

Cardiff CF24 0DE

Wales

United Kingdom

Ian Thomson

Last revised: July 2007